Getting Started with P5.js

Posted by Jack McKew on Fri 25 December 2020 in Javascript • Tagged with javascript, data-viz • 2 min read

In this post we're going to make use of the library P5.js which enables us to create interactive visualisation in the browser. We're going to create an interactive pond where users will be able to click on the screen to create a new drop in the pond and watch …


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API Routes in Node.js

Posted by Jack McKew on Fri 02 October 2020 in Javascript • Tagged with javascript • 3 min read

First off what's an API and more specifically what's an API route? API stands for Application Programming Interface, meaning it's how to communicate with the system you are creating. A route within an API is a specific path to take to get specific information or data out of. This post …


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Actions and Reducers in React-Redux

Posted by Jack McKew on Fri 25 September 2020 in Javascript • Tagged with javascript • 4 min read

Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript applications, and React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. To bridge the two, you get react-redux which allows our user interfaces to interact & respond to the current state of the application.

In this post let's go into actions and reducers …


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Components in React.js

Posted by Jack McKew on Fri 18 September 2020 in Javascript • Tagged with javascript • 4 min read

To put it simply, components are the building blocks that make up the app in React.js. A component more specifically is a JavaScript class or function that optionally accepts inputs (aka properties or props) and returns a React element that describes how a section of the interface should appear …


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Interactive Random Walkers with Javascript

Posted by Jack McKew on Fri 03 July 2020 in Javascript • Tagged with javascript, data-viz • 2 min read

Random walks are where randomly-moving objects move around, that's it. The most fascinating part about it is how many seemingly 'patterns' emerge from the random behaviour, and that everyone sees something different in the visualisations. In this post, let's build an interactive random walk visualisation with Javascript. Let's control the …


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Simulate Virus Outbreak with Javascript

Posted by Jack McKew on Thu 09 April 2020 in Javascript • Tagged with javascript, data-viz • 2 min read

This post will and simulate how viruses can spread throughout a community and implement a variety of different parameters to see how these affect the simulation. This is following on from last week's post on how to do a bouncing ball simulation with the canvas API https://jackmckew.dev/pelican-and-javascript-bouncing-balls-in-canvas …


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Pelican and Javascript - Bouncing Balls in Canvas

Posted by Jack McKew on Thu 02 April 2020 in Javascript • Tagged with javascript, data-viz • 3 min read

Today let's look into building a visualisation of some bouncing balls with Javascript. The inspiration for building this comes from Harry Stevens over at the Washington Post for his amazing piece of data journalism around the coronavirus.

Here is a gif of the current version of my bouncing balls using …


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